A Story About Loss
by Krissy Mae Anderson
Summary: Can a man still be a father if his children are dead?


_"A Story About Loss" by Krissy Mae Anderson  
_

**Summary:** "Can a man still be a father if his children are dead? The man who I was then didn't know the answer to the question that he asked himself. He was trying to remember what name his wife wanted to give to his third child, who died before he or she was born." A vignette inspired by "The Crossing" and meant as a response to Kekelina's "War."  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Spoilers:** "A Walk in the Woods"/ "The Crossing" / "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished"  
**Disclaimer:** Me? Own ER? I wish!  
**Author's note:** The story was conceived after a plotbunny latched onto my brain after I heard Luka say something that stuck with me during "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished", when Susan reminds him that the girl who "OD'd" on banana splits has an eating disorder. The alt.tv.er site gives it as "No, I'll tell you what an eating disorder is. It's when a mother goes without food for six days so she can feed her children." I watched the eppy twice, and both times I clearly heard him say "feed her _three_ children." Well, if I'm wrong, it means that either my hearing or my mind is playing tricks on me. Also, I'd like to bring the readers' attention to a major blooper seen by us in "A Walk in the Woods" when we see Luka standing over the coffins - people were generally not buried that way in Vukovar in the last several months of the attack because of heavy shelling.  
**Author's note 2:** This was written almost in one night, as a sort of response to Kekelina's fic "War" (now apparently deleted). I am quite anti-war myself, so I wanted to try to show what war of any kind does to people. The title of the story was inspired by "Letters from Vukovar", written by Radio Vukovar journalist Sinisa Glavasevic (pronounced Sinisha Glavashevich) during the siege of Vukovar. Along with many other people, Sinisa was taken by the JNA from the Vukovar hospital and killed.

* * *

Can a man still be a father if his children are dead? The man who I was then didn't know the answer to the question that he asked himself. He was trying to remember what name his wife wanted to give to his third child, who died before he or she was born. The man only found out the news that afternoon, during an intense argument with his wife - she threw a plate at him that grazed his head, he slapped her, and she screamed at him in tears that she was pregnant. She was too early along in the pregnancy to know the sex of the baby - but she knew of the possibility that she might not live to find out, just as he did, so she thought of names to calm herself down. She cried and told him that she gave all the food that he brought home to their two children but she had to eat for the baby, that she tried to only eat enough food to not lose weight so the baby would not be harmed.

He apologized to her then and said he would get her more food, sell his grandfather's gold watch to the neighbor for some money and try to get whatever he could for it. She forgave him and he felt guilty, because he could see the imprint of his hand on her cheek. His daughter woke up and wanted to go with him to buy food, but he didn't let her, told her to stay inside, he didn't want her to be hurt. He kissed his wife, promised to his daughter that he would come back safe, smiled at his baby son sleeping in the crib and left.

He stood in line for two hours just to get some milk, bread and sausage, he spent all the money they had on it, but now there was no one to eat it, even if he still had it - the bag with the food lay somewhere on the street below, in the place where he dropped it when the house was hit. Everyone was dead, and he couldn't force himself to eat whatever food he still had with him. He wanted to throw up earlier, but since all he had for the last two weeks was water, there was nothing to throw up.

The man couldn't talk, because he screamed himself hoarse. He tried calling for help again, but he couldn't raise his voice above a whisper. He tried eating, forced himself to swallow some bread that he had in his coat pocket, but his stomach lurched and he threw up. Suddenly, he felt angry with himself and hit his left hand against a piece of the ceiling next to him, feeling satisfied as he felt the pain. He lifted the hand up and looked at his bloody knuckles covered with plaster dust for a while. After the man had enough of looking at his hand, he decided to get up.

He gently moved his daughter's body out of his lap and stood up, nearly falling back down because he felt dizzy. He looked down and noticed fresh blood soaking through his already blood-soaked sweater. He pulled it up and frowned, not being able to recall the source of the shallow gash that ran down his belly, strangely straight. He looked at it again, looked at the sweater and saw that it was cut almost in half at the bottom, almost with a surgical precision. He felt even more confused, and tried to think what could have made it.

All of a sudden, he started laughing hoarsely, and laughed so hard he started coughing. He understood that the source of the gash was a piece of glass - a simple piece of glass from a milk bottle that was full of milk when it was in the bag that he held in his hand just before the shell hit his house and the shockwave knocked him off his feet, making him fall on the bag with the food, and dragging him across the broken pieces of the milk bottle.

Finally, he remembered what he wanted to do. Ignoring the gash, he carefully picked the body of his daughter up and carried her over to the bedroom, most of which was still standing. He got as much debris off the blanket as he could and gently put her down. She looked like she was sleeping. He had seen many dead people, and they rarely looked peaceful, but she looked like she was just taking an afternoon nap. He felt tears brimming in his eyes, barely suppressed them, and returned to what used to be the living room.

He repeated the process with his wife, whose body was still warm, and for a moment he expected her to open her eyes and smile at him, and he suddenly felt so guilty that some tears finally escaped, one falling on his wife's face, which was not peaceful, like her daughter's but twisted in pain. He put her next to his daughter, and stood still for a moment, wishing that it would be a dream, that he would wake up any moment, but he knew that he was awake...

Going back to the living room seemed like the hardest thing in his life. He kneeled near the crib and started to lift pieces of the debris off it. He noticed that his hands were bruised and several of the nails were broken badly, but paid no attention to that. Finally, he lifted the broken pieces of the crib and stared at the body of his son, not even two years of age but already dead. The child seemed to have died in his sleep - he looked just as peaceful as his sister - his chubby face with wisps of curly black hair the only part of the small body not crushed or broken. The man made a sound that was close to a howl and clasped a hand over his mouth, closing his eyes for a moment. After he managed to get his emotions under control, he picked his son up carefully and carried him back into the bedroom, placing him into his mother's arms.

After that, the man stood still for a while, looking at his family, unsure of what to do next. He shivered and coughed, suddenly realizing that the cold that he felt wasn't just from the shock - half of the ceiling in the apartment was gone. The man lay down on the bed next to his wife, took his daughter into his arms, and stared at the stars that were there in place of the ceiling. His daughter's skin was cold and he unconsciously rubbed her arm, trying to make it warm up.

The man dozed off for a while and woke up a half an hour later, startled by the resuming of the shelling. He looked around and nearly bolted up from the bed, but remembered that his daughter was in his arms. He carefully disentangled himself from her and got up, walking around the bed to look at his wife. He put his hand on her stomach, pulled her sweater up slightly and looked at the gash on her belly, much deeper and irregular then the one on his. He felt a hysterical urge to laugh at the fact, but stopped himself after one nervous laugh that resembled a sob.

He moved his hand over to the spot where the baby would be and once again tried to remember what his wife wanted to name it. He still couldn't remember. He pulled the sweater down carefully and got up. Shaking from the cold, he walked over to the doorway and sat down on the floor. The man stared at the sky again and suddenly remembered what the wife wanted to call the child. Andjelko or Andjelka. Angel. How appropriate it seems now, he mused, an angel for a God who didn't give a damn about the people. The God who seemed to have a shortage of angels - who just took more and more of people to be them every day.

The man jerked awake several hours later. He was very cold, and his arms and legs were almost numb. He got up and stiffly walked around, almost tripping over a large piece of debris several times. He walked over to the bed and lay down again. It was very quiet, and he felt like screaming, but his throat was now sore from the screaming he did the day before, so he just lay there, silently.

He heard voices outside of what once was his apartment, but couldn't open his mouth and answer. He waited, listening to the sound of the footsteps, which became closer, until finally two men appeared in the doorway. He knew one of them, Zdravko - he lived in the apartment on the first floor, worked for the police, brought his children candy sometimes, a big man with a bushy mustache and a loud laugh. Zdravko was not laughing now, he was looking at the man lying stiffly on the bed, his dead wife and children at his side.

"My God," he whispered, his face almost white from shock. "My God."

The man on the bed just stared at Zdravko for a while, and then suddenly jumped off the bed and stumbled towards him.

"Where were you yesterday, asshole?" he whispered hysterically. "Why did you not come and save them?"

Zdravko didn't answer, but just continued looking past the man at the unmoving bodies on the bed, his face frozen with horror.

"Why did you not come?" the man managed to say before swaying and almost falling down. Zdravko caught him before he fell and got a look at his face, distorted into a grimace, eyes tightly shut and a rivulet of blood running down his chin because he bit into his lip too hard. And then, the man fell on his knees and the tears caught in his eyes finally escaped and Zdravko motioned the man who came with him to go out of the room, and they stood outside uneasily and shared a cigarette, trying not to listen to the howling sobs coming from the other room.

After a while, the sobs stopped and the man came out of the room, his face wet with tears.

"I want to bury them," he said.

Zdravko looked at his companion and they both looked back at the man, incredulous.

"But - you know that's insane."

"I want to bury them," the man repeated, staring at them with unseeing eyes, not really hearing them.

Zdravko sighed and looked at his companion. The other man sighed as well and shrugged.

"Fine," Zdravko said. "Pavao knows where we can get some coffins. I'll get a shovel or two. We'll do it after the next round of shelling stops."

The man nodded numbly. Zdravko and Pavao left, and he wandered around the ruins of his apartment, packing up whatever important things he could find into his daughter's backpack. He found the folder where they kept documents and stuffed it inside. The shelf with the framed photographs was buried under the rubble, but he found one, from his daughter's fourth birthday. He put it in as well, and packed a pair of jeans and a sweater as an afterthought. After that, he found some of the children's toys and some dried flowers his wife always kept in a vase and put them into a plastic shopping bag.

Zdravko returned, this time with another man, whom he introduced as Mate. The man watched as Zdravko gently picked up his wife, who seemed as small as a child in his neighbor's big hands and carried her out. Mate looked at the man questioningly. The man pointed at his daughter with a shaking hand. Mate picked the girl up and carried her out, and the man followed him out of the doorless doorway leading out of the apartment with no ceiling, holding his son.

They cautiously proceeded to the park nearby where they could dig a grave quickly, without being seen by anyone. Pavao was there, digging frantically, three coffins stacked on the ground next to him. He stopped for a moment and opened the biggest coffin for Zdravko, who carefully put the body of the man's wife inside. Zdravko opened the two smaller coffins and the man and Mate put the children's bodies inside. After putting the girl into the coffin, Mate crossed himself, shook his fist at the sky, and went to help Pavao.

The man walked over to his wife's coffin, kneeled next to it, and kissed her on the cheek. He undid the small golden chain with the cross that she was wearing and put it around his own neck. He got back up and walked over to the two small coffins with the children and Zdravko carefully closed the bigger coffin. The man kissed his son and daughter and then got up shakily, walked over to a tree and covered his face with his hands.

Zdravko covered the other two coffins. Seeing several children's toys in a plastic bag together with the dried flowers that the man brought with him, he put them on the coffins and joined Mate and Pavao in digging the grave. The man just stood near the tree motionlessly for a while, only moving when he heard a loud explosion, far away but still very loud.

Pavao cursed and the three men started digging faster. The man walked over to the coffins and stared at them, feeling very strange.

"We're almost done - we have to leave soon!" Zdravko called up and the man nodded. He looked up at the sky and saw that snow started to fall, whirling like some strange confetti thrown up in the air, snowflakes melting before they reached the ground. He looked down again, at the three plain coffins holding his life.

"Anyone got a knife?" he asked. Mate got a small knife out of his pocket and gave it to the man. The man walked over to an overturned park bench nearby and started carving out letters on it. After about ten minutes, he managed to carve "D-J-M-A KV - 7ST91" into the bench, and the three men finished digging the grave at about the same time. One after the other, they lowered the coffins lowered into the jagged, uneven hole. When they were all inside, one on another, the man walked over towards the edge of the grave and looked at the coffins for one last time.

The staccato noise of the mortar shells connecting with buildings was getting closer, and the man turned around and started to walk away. The three men with shovels hurriedly threw the loose earth into the grave, and after filling the hole and scattering the remaining earth around, Pavao and Mate dragged the park bench over the place where the grave was, and joined Zdravko. They soon caught up with the man, who was aimlessly walking down the street, shivering from the wind, a child's backpack pressed to his chest, snow almost covering his hair. Zdravko took his jacket off and put it over the man's shoulders, but the man didn't notice, looking off into the distance, where the flashes of explosions looked like some strange fireworks to his eyes. Zdravko brushed the snow out of the younger man's hair and put an arm around his shoulders to support him in case he stumbled.

"Such a fucking waste of life," Pavao muttered, spitting on the ground.

"We'll all be dead," Mate remarked gloomily. He took a bottle out of his pocket and took a drink. He offered it to his two friends, who drank from it as well, Zdravko coughing slightly when he swallowed too much liquor.

"What are we going to do now?" Pavao cleared his throat and kicked at a piece of roofing material lying in the middle of the road.

"Walk him over to the hospital. He's a doctor." Zdravko pressed the bottle into the younger man's hand, bent the limp fingers around it and made him raise the hand with the bottle to his mouth and drink. The man didn't react, but just took a gulp and continued to stare straight ahead. Zdravko retrieved the bottle and passed it back to Mate, who put it back into his pocket.

The four men walked away in silence, their shoes leaving dirty footprints in the wet snow that was already melting on the ground. Soon, they disappeared around the corner, and the snow started to fall again. Soon, their footprints were gone, and all that remained from them was a bouquet of dried flowers and a doll lying on freshly dug earth underneath a park bench.

**The End**


End file.
